Fidelity now appears to gone live with the eight additional markets they announced they would be adding earlier this year – there doesn’t seem to have been any official announcement of this, but the exchanges, currencies and commissions are now listed on the international trading pages of their website.
The new markets are Austria, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Ireland, Poland, South Africa and Spain and all relevant new currencies have also been added (Danish Krone, Polish Zloty and South African Rand). Rates look reasonable – for online trades, the euro markets are €19 (US$25) like others already on the platform, Denmark is DKK160 (US$28), Poland is PLN90 (US$29) and South Africa is ZAR225 (US$27). However, there is of course a foreign currency conversion charge on top, of up to 1%.
This gives Fidelity an unusually wide range of markets, meaning that the firm now looks like one of the more useful international brokers available to US residents at a reasonable price. The service now looks roughly on a par with Saxo Bank for equities, which is not easily available to US clients: Saxo probably works out cheaper, but the gap is less than it used to be. Interactive Brokers remains by far the cheapest option in the US, but its range of markets is now more limited, although it covers most major exchanges.
Whether Fidelity will accept clients not resident in the US I’m not entirely sure, but my impression is not (this probably reflects the fact that they runs different retail services in different countries, although most are much more limited than the US brokerage). Feedback from any investors who have managed to get a definite answer one way or another would be welcome.